


initiate the heart within me

by jemmasimmmons



Series: a thousand finger prints [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Baby Fic, Canon Divergent, F/M, Pregnancy, sci ops era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 01:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10675275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: "She kisses him again, as though she is answering him, and when she manages to click the door behind her open, she steps backwards into the bedroom and opens her eyes. Without any hesitation, Fitz takes her hand and follows after her."Everything is the same, except Fitz and Jemma have a baby. The Ollie AU.





	initiate the heart within me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shafferthefirst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shafferthefirst/gifts).



> welcome to the ollie au! technically, it belongs to the whole group chat but when shay asked me to write some for her birthday i couldn't stop once i'd started. there's a lot more of it, spanning seasons one to three, but this is my little take on its beginning :) i hope you like it!
> 
> the title comes from 'son' by sleeping at last. find me on tumblr @jeemmasimmons!

 

 

i.

The hotel Sci-Ops has chosen to hold its annual summer ball in this year is right in the middle of Boston, with plush red carpets, an open bar and a balcony off the main reception room overlooking the gardens.

Sitting at a table with some of her fellow agents, Jemma is only half listening to them, their excited voices talking about the plans for the new projects they hope will get funded in the autumn sounding more like background noise than anything she need pay attention to. Although the purpose of the ball was to discuss such things, and to cajole their SOs into supporting their proposals, tonight she cannot help but feel that it is more of a celebration, even if it is only a private one between her and Fitz.

This morning, after three months of negotiations, their Section 17 exemption letter had been signed by none other than Director Fury himself.

Exhaling deeply, Jemma hides her smile in her glass of champagne and feels her stomach leap with excitement for the hundredth time since she and Fitz had gotten the call.

It has been almost a year since the first time they had kissed, in their lab of all places, and all the harboured feelings and desires of the past eight years had come tumbling out in a flurry of words and whispers. They had spent a few months holding hands in secret and kissing in supply cupboards and in the secrecy of their own flat before the novelty of that had worn off and it had become more of a chore than a pleasure. Slowly, Jemma had come to realise that she had fallen in love with her best friend and soon she hadn’t wanted to hide that any longer.

She puts her empty glass back down on the table just as she feels a hand on her back, brushing gently across the delicate lacework of her dress. With a smile, she looks up to find Fitz re-joining their table, setting down two beers next to her with a wink. He has shrugged off his dinner jacket to show a fitted white shirt underneath, complete with a black bow tie, and his apparent unawareness of what this is doing to her is only making her feel all the more attracted to him.

With a sigh, Jemma leans forward in her seat so that her bare knee brushes against Fitz’s trouser leg. He turns to her instantly, and she is struck by the way he almost glows under the soft lighting of the hotel reception room, his eyes bright and his lips still holding the faint shape of a smile.

‘Yeah? Are you okay?’

She nods. Underneath the table, she can feel the warmth of his skin seep into hers. ‘Fitz. Do you want to…?’

He blinks, her subtle hint going right over his head. ‘Want to what?’

Jemma shakes her head, thinking _I can’t believe this is the boy I am in love with,_ followed swiftly by _this is the boy I am in_ love _with_ , and reaches out to take his hand. She lifts her gaze upwards to the ceiling for a moment, before raising one eyebrow at him in a silent question. The look on Fitz’s face as the realisation of what she is asking dawns upon him is almost comical.

‘ _Oh_ -‘

He mumbles a hasty excuse to the agent he is sitting next to and almost topples the glasses on the table in his haste to get up. Biting down on her bottom lip to stop herself from giggling, Jemma stands with him and they both make their way across the room with their hands still entwined, doing very little to hide their intent.

It gives Jemma an immense thrill to remember that they will never have to pretend again.

They have barely left the noise and light of the party behind them before she is gripping the collar of his shirt and bringing him down to kiss her. Fitz responds eagerly, bringing the hand that isn’t holding hers up to caress her cheek.

‘Do you have your key card?’ she asks him. ‘Which floor are you on?’

Sci-Ops had rented out the whole hotel for the ball, assigning each agent a double room to sleep in for the night.

Fitz fishes his card out from his pocket and flashes it at her. ‘It’s on the first floor.’

Jemma nods, feeling a brief pang of guilt that her own pre-paid room will remain unslept in tonight, its crisp cotton sheets unrumpled, but then his lips find hers again in the dark and she can think of nothing else but that.

She almost trips up the stairs to his room in her high heels, trying desperately to walk without breaking their kiss, and has to slip them off. Fitz bends down to pick them up for her and they run the rest of the way up the stairs together, their laughter echoing off the walls.

Once they have reached the landing, Jemma turns around to kiss him again, standing up on tip toes to wind her arms around his neck and feels the now-familiar wave of desire rise up inside her as he kisses her back.

After they had applied for their Section 17 exemption, Fitz had been obliged to move out of their shared flat. SHIELD wouldn’t allow them to live together while their application was being processed and he had reasoned that it would be easier for him to crash with one of their friends than it would be for her. It had been rather gallant of him to volunteer to leave but, as she had lain awake with an empty spot beside her on the bed, Jemma had wished more than once that they had tried to find an alternate solution.

Tonight will be the first time they have slept together in three months and it is only as she remembers this that she realises quite how much she has missed him.

With one hand on her waist and the other at the back of her neck, Fitz walks her backwards until she is pressed flat against his hotel room door. With her fingertips on his cheeks, Jemma feels a flurry in her stomach as their kisses take on a different pattern, becoming deeper and more heated.

When her teeth accidentally graze the inside of his bottom lip, Fitz groans aloud, sending a shiver of delight running down her spine.

‘ _Jemma_ …’

Over the past year, she has found joy in a great many things he could do that she hadn’t known he could before. The greatest of these joys, however, has to be the way he can say her name. It is so different from when he says _Simmons_ , even though she loves that too; whenever he says her name it is so much softer, so much more careful, as if each syllable is something important.

Whenever he says her name, Jemma feels like she is something precious to him.

She kisses him again, as though she is answering him, and when she manages to click the door behind her open, she steps backwards into the bedroom and opens her eyes. Without any hesitation, Fitz takes her hand and follows after her.

 

ii.

There is an oak tree outside the window of their lab at the Academy and, as the late winter sunshine streams through the glass and into the room, the bare branches create patterns, cutting through the pale gold light.

It is these patterns that capture Fitz’s attention one November morning, as they dance over Jemma’s face, her hair, her hands, and the swell of her six-month-pregnant stomach. As he watches, she shifts her weight first to one foot and then to the other, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, focusing intently on the computer screen in front of her.

Fitz has known for quite some time now that Jemma is pretty, known that the way she smiles makes his heart leap inside his chest and known that when her eyes light up it brightens the whole of her face. He has known for a long time that she is beautiful, but these past few months just looking at her has been enough to take his breath away.

The branches bend; the patterns flicker; and Jemma looks up to find him staring at her.

She gives him a smile, her eyebrows knitting together in puzzlement.

‘Fitz? Is everything alright?’

He nods, returning her smile, and reluctantly pulls his gaze away from her. Despite the fact that they have been together for almost two years now and that they were about to have a _baby_ together, he still feels almost shy about being able to look at her any time he likes.

‘I, uh, was just wondering if you’d take a look at this for me.’

He fans his hands over the blueprints laid out in front of him, plans that he had been studying before he had become distracted. With one hand on the counter to steady herself, Jemma moves around the bench towards him to take the papers. She has to bend over to see them properly, her hands on the edge of the bench to brace her additional weight, in a stance that cannot be comfy, so Fitz uses his foot to roll a stool across for her to sit on.

For a moment, he thinks Jemma will protest but then her aching feet get the better of her. She sinks onto the stool with a sigh, and rubs one hand in the small of her back as she pulls the blueprints closer to her to examine them.

Transferring from Sci-Ops to a mobile lab back at the Academy had been Fitz’s idea, back when they had first discovered Jemma was pregnant. It was closer to the hospital for appointments, would give them more flexible working hours and they knew Agent Weaver would be generous in granting them the maternity leave they wanted. In return, they had agreed to be guest lecturers for the cadets every once in a while and maybe even lead a few lab sessions a month.

Fitz imagines standing at a work bench, explaining bio-mechanics to a group of students with their baby strapped to his chest, and feels himself start to smile.

He clears his throat quickly, before the image can take over his thoughts, and points to the blueprints.

‘We both know how awkward scanning equipment is to take into the field, right? What if we had tech that was remote controlled, compact _and_ mobile? That way, scanning could take place without agents having to be in close proximity and it would be much faster as well as safer.’

He looks up, and is relieved to find Jemma nodding enthusiastically, her eyes scanning the pages as he explains.

‘And you wouldn’t even have to stop at scanning,’ she says, and lifts up one sheet to examine the diagram of the palm sized drone in the light. ‘Looking at the mechanics here, it wouldn’t be too difficult to put listening devices inside, or a camera.’

This time, it is Fitz’s turn to nod, as he sees exactly what she means and how easy it would be to adapt the designs for individual purposes.

‘Yeah, exactly! I’d just have to move the wiring here, adjust the sensors…’

The cogs in his mind begin to turn and, as Jemma meets his gaze over the bench, he can see that behind her shining eyes hers are doing the same. To know that both of them are thinking the exact same thing gives him a rush that, even eight years on, nothing else comes close to matching.

‘We could build an entire fleet of them,’ he jokes, just to keep her smiling for a little bit longer. ‘Our own private, miniature tech team, better than any of the interns at this place.’

The remark has the desired effect. Jemma laughs out loud, shaking her head at him, and opens her mouth, presumably to tell him that their technical support at the Academy isn’t _that_ bad, when all of a sudden she stops short and her smile slips from her lips.

When he sees her hand go to her stomach, Fitz feels himself fall cold.

‘Jemma?’

Pushing himself off his own stool, he moves to her side and kneels, covering her hand with his own and tries to fight back his rising panic.

‘Jemma, what is it? What’s wrong?’

There had always been a part of him that felt protective towards her, even though he had tried his hardest not to let it show, knowing that she was more than capable of looking after herself. But that instinct to protect her has become more acute over the last couple of months, as it became harder for her to move and her aches and pains became more intense, and Fitz is learning not to be too concerned about letting it show anymore.

Jemma blinks at him, her eyes filling with a sudden affection and surprise, and then she shakes her head with a slight laugh, squeezing his fingers.

‘Fitz…I’m fine, truly. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you…’

Fitz shakes his head, the knots in his stomach loosening slightly as he sees the smile on her face. He gives her hand a squeeze in return.

‘No, no, you didn’t. Well, not really, I was just worried…’ He swallows and looks up at her. ‘What was it?’

Jemma smiles even wider, the hand on her bump rubbing carefully at a spot on her left side.

‘The baby kicked,’ she explains, ‘and I’d thought he was asleep, so it startled me. I suppose I must have woken him up when I laughed, but…that was the strongest I’ve ever felt him kick.’

His panic now fully abated, replaced with excitement and curiosity instead, Fitz lifts his hand.

‘Can I?’

Jemma nods, giving him an encouraging smile, taking hold of his hand and guiding it across her belly. For a moment, Fitz feels nothing, but as his fingers skim her belly button he feels it: a movement stronger than any of the other previous flutters he had felt pressing his hand to her stomach. Unexpectedly, the sensation brings tears to his eyes.

‘Wow,’ is all he can think to say.

Jemma laughs again, and lifts him up from the ground to sit back on his stool. She points back to the blueprints in front of them.

‘Have you thought of a name for these little things yet?’ she teases.

His hand still resting on her bump, trying to feel their baby’s somersaults, it takes Fitz a moment to realise what she is talking about. When he does, he rolls his eyes.

‘Not yet,’ he admits. ‘I only finished the schematics yesterday, Simmons, give me a chance.’

He watches her flip through the pages with a ghost of a smile on her face, but there is something bright in her eyes that makes him frown.

‘Why? Do you have an idea for a name?’

Jemma hums thoughtfully. ‘I might have.’

When he raises one eyebrow at her, she sighs and gives him a rueful grin. ‘Mum sent me my old fairy tale book, saying that we’re going to be needing it fairly soon, and I was flicking through it last night. I don’t think we need an army of miniature drones, but what do you say about making seven of them and calling them the _dwarfs_?’

Fitz isn’t quite sure what it is, whether it is how beautiful she looks in the late winter sun, or the reminder that one day soon he will be able to read stories to their child or how utterly ideal the name is for his creations. Whatever it is, it makes him laugh, and with a sudden surge of joy he crosses the slight gap between them to kiss her, softly, on the lips.

‘I think that sounds absolutely _perfect_.’

 

iii.

‘And you’ll come back at lunch to sit with us for a while?’

‘Of course I will; where else would I go?’

‘And you’ll bring me lunch?’

‘Your favourite salad from the Academy canteen, yeah.’

‘And please make sure my desk is how I left it, there were some notes I hadn’t finished working on there and you _know_ how eager the interns are to try and be helpful…’

‘I’ll make sure nothing’s been moved.’

‘And you _are_ coming back at lunchtime, aren’t you?’

Fitz pauses buttoning up his shirt and turns to her, exasperated.

‘Jemma, if you don’t want me to go back to the lab today then I won’t go.’

It has been two days since Oliver James Fitz-Simmons had been born and two days since Jemma had met the only person in the world who could possibly rival Fitz for being who she loves the most. It had been a fairly easy, if rather long, delivery, and a little after twelve hours after her contractions had begun, Ollie had made his way into the world with a wail of protest and a pair of slate-grey eyes that had gone right to Jemma’s heart.

Of course, this also means that it had been almost four days since either she or Fitz had set foot in their lab which, for them, was some kind of record.

Shaking her head, Jemma adjusts her hold on Ollie, who is lying fast asleep in her arms, supported by pillows.

‘Fitz, we’ve both been itching to get back to the lab for days,’ she reminds him. ‘One of us really ought to go today, and since I clearly can’t…’

‘It has to be me,’ he finishes for her, grabbing a jumper from their chest of drawers. ‘Yeah, I know.’ He hesitates, holding her gaze over the bed. ‘But Jemma, if you’d rather I stayed then I will.’

For a moment, seeing the tenderness in his eyes that never ceases to floor her, Jemma feels her resolve waver and she almost gives in. The past few days they have spent alone with Ollie, learning how to feed him, soothe him and put him to sleep together have been exhausting, but unforgettable in the best way, and if she was able to choose then she would want to live inside them for the rest of her life. But, logically, she knows that time needs to move on and the first step in this is for Fitz to return to work.

With a sigh, Jemma shakes her head again and this time offers him a reassuring smile.

‘No, really, you go.’ Against her, Ollie kicks out against his blankets and she looks down at him, brushing her fingertips against the wisps of blonde hair on the top of his head. ‘We’ll be alright here for a few hours without Daddy, won’t we?’

She feels the mattress dip slightly as Fitz sits down beside her, his bag dropping to the floor.

‘You know for someone who is _itching_ to get back to work, you certainly look very comfortable there with him,’ he jokes.

Jemma scoffs. ‘I just spent the last nine months growing and birthing another human being,’ she reminds him with a pointed look. ‘I think I’m entitled to feel too tired to move for just a little bit longer.’

Fitz’s face takes on a slightly sheepish look at this, and he nods. ‘Fair enough.’

His arms move towards Ollie, and Jemma reluctantly loosens her hold on their son, allowing Fitz to scoop him up and cradle him close. Initially, he had been apprehensive about holding Ollie on his own, afraid of holding him too hard, or not supporting his head enough, but over the past few days he has grown in confidence and the sight of him with their baby held against his chest and a look of pure wonder in his eyes makes Jemma’s heart skip a beat.

‘Have you got pictures on your phone to show the lab techs?’ she murmurs. ‘You know they’re all going to swamp you for them the minute you step into the lab.’

Fitz nods, gently rocking Ollie back and forth. ‘I’ve got a few, yeah.’ With the hand that isn’t cradling their son, he brushes the ball of his thumb over his cheek. Ollie gives a little huff at this, and Jemma sees his tiny pink fingers peek out over the blanket, stretching unconsciously towards his father. ‘I don’t think any picture would ever do him justice though.’

‘No,’ she agrees in a whisper, feeling her chest swell with pride. ‘I don’t think it could.’

After another moment or two, Fitz sighs, and bobs down to press a light kiss to Ollie’s forehead before gently easing him back into Jemma’s arms. She takes him with mixed feeling; on the one hand, since he had been born she has been wanting to hold him close to her always, but on the other, by handing him back to her Fitz had truly decided to leave at last.

Feeling a twinge of disappointment at the base of her heart, she looks up at him as he stands, picking up his bag once more.

‘But you’ll-‘

She is cut off by Fitz kissing her, his lips soft and forgiving, and the words she had been planning on saying fall from her head as easily as raindrops fall from the sky.

‘I’ll come back at lunchtime,’ Fitz finishes her sentence. ‘I promise.’

Giving her one last kiss, he walks to their bedroom door and opens it, pausing one last time to glance back at her and smile.

‘I love you both.’

Feeling the warmth that hearing these words never fails to produce flood through her, Jemma grins back, the physical manifestation of their love slowly drifting back to sleep in her arms.

‘We love you too.’

When the door has finally closed behind him, Jemma looks down at Ollie. It feels like she has done nothing but look at him since he was born, but it is only now with Fitz gone from her sight that she is able to recognise so much of him in their son.

Ollie’s dark eyes, far darker than Fitz’s blue ones, will turn brown like her own with time, Jemma knows this. The curve of his mouth and his high forehead are hers too, but the downy blonde curls on the top of his head and his button nose and the way when he cries she understands without a doubt that she will do anything to stop him hurting…well, those things were all Fitz.

‘And we do, don’t we?’ she whispers to Ollie, drawing her knees up to her chest to rest him against them. Leaning back on her thighs, his cheeks puff out, and Jemma rubs her thumbs over them with a smile. ‘We love Daddy so very much.’

All of a sudden, the bedroom door bangs, making both her and Ollie jump.

‘ _Fitz_! What are you doing?’

He throws his bag so far across the room that it skids through the bathroom door and onto the tiles and reaches up to tug his jumper over his head.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he says. ‘I’m not going in today.’

‘But,’ Jemma protests weakly, shifting Ollie back into the crook of her elbow, ‘you promised Agent Weaver…’

Fitz snorts, and as he pulls himself free of his jumper he pulls his button down off too, leaving him in just his t-shirt.

‘I’ll ring Agent Weaver.’

Lifting the corner of the duvet up, he crawls commando-style underneath it until he reaches the head of the bed. The way he pokes his head out, like a meerkat checking that the coast is clear, makes Jemma laugh which in turn makes Fitz grin, and he takes both of Ollie’s tiny feet in his hands and presses kisses to them.

‘I reckon they can cope without us in the lab for one more day, _at least_.’

Leaning her head back on the pillows, Jemma smiles at him and wonders whether he had known all along how little she had wanted him to leave.

 

iv.

To celebrate Ollie turning five months old, they go on a picnic.

When Jemma had first suggested it to him, Fitz had thought she meant they would picnic in the Academy grounds, overlooking the main building and only metres away from their flat. His girlfriend, however, had had a very different idea for where their picnic should take place.

‘Fitz! Hurry up!’

Weighed down with their hampers and Ollie’s changing bags, Fitz pauses with a huff and glances towards Jemma. She is walking backwards up the grassy hill, her hair flying out behind her as she laughs. Ollie is strapped in his carrier on her chest, facing outwards so he can kick his legs freely and gaze out at the world around him.

Seeing them like that, so happy, so together, so full of belonging, is almost enough to make Fitz forget to be grumpy.

‘It’s hard to hurry,’ he calls up to her, ‘when you have to climb the hill carrying all this gubbins with you.’

Jemma laughs again, and steps forward towards him. ‘Here then, let me take a bag.’

Despite his moans, he brushes her off and continues up the hill, gesturing to Ollie as he does so.

‘I think you’re carrying enough already, don’t you?’

Fitz can practically feel Jemma roll her eyes fondly at him when he says this, but she falls into step next to him as they reach the top of the hill. She had pointed the hill out to him as they had been driving, Ollie tugging his socks off in the backseat behind them, and declared it the perfect place for their picnic. Now they are up here, Fitz is ready to admit, begrudgingly, that she had been right.

With views for miles around and a large oak tree behind them for shade, this is a million times better than the field at the back of the Academy.

While Jemma unstraps Ollie, Fitz takes a rug out of one of the many bags they have brought with them and lays it out on the grass so part of it is in the sun and part is in the shade of the tree. He sits back on his heels and opens his arms as Jemma passes their son to him, before rummaging in the cooler bag for his lunch.

It is only recently that he has started eating solids and so they are still figuring out what his favourites are. This week, it is pureed apricots, and Ollie claps his podgy fists together excitedly when Jemma brings the spoon up to his lips.

After their son’s feeding, it is their turn. Fitz unpacks their sandwiches, freshly cut slices of pepper and un-pureed apricots, while Jemma balances Ollie on her lap and takes out a box with two slices of chocolate cake wrapped inside.

For a while, they munch in silence, and Fitz takes the opportunity to tip his head back, allowing the summer sun’s rays to warm his face and bare arms. There is, however, a slight breeze in the air, and he opens his eyes again to tell Jemma she had better put a cardigan on Ollie, only to find that she is already guiding his arms into one. This makes him smile, and he leans back on his elbows to finish his sandwich.

Another few minutes have gone by before Jemma clears her throat.

‘Fitz?’

He looks up at her. ‘Hmm?’

‘Yesterday, I…received a proposition.’

Fitz sniffs, and stuffs the last of his crust into his mouth. ‘I hope you told him where to get off.’

‘I didn’t mean-’ Jemma sighs, shaking her head, and Fitz does his best not to laugh at how put out she looks. ‘Not _that_ kind of proposition…’

‘Well, what kind then?’

She hoists Ollie off her lap and onto the rug, which he immediately tries to grab with his fist to stuff in his mouth.

‘Apparently,’ Jemma says, ‘we’ve been scouted for a field team. Both of us.’

Fitz blinks at her, trying to comprehend what this means. ‘What? Somebody wants _us_ to go into the field?’

‘Not in the field _exactly_ …’ Jemma sighs again, and hooks her finger into Ollie’s mouth to free the blanket. ‘According to Agent Weaver, we’d be part of a mobile team. From what I could gather, we’d be the science department but we wouldn’t be expected to actually _go_ into the field, or engage in combat.’

Fitz mulls this over as he takes a slice of pepper from the box, his heart beating fast against his chest. ‘And, uh, what did you say? When Weaver made this proposition to you?’

Jemma shrugs, looking up to meet his gaze. ‘I told her I’d tell you, and that we’d talk about it.’

‘What is there to talk about?’ With a frown, Fitz swallows his mouthful of pepper. ‘We’re not _actually_ thinking about accepting it, are we…?’

He trails off as he notices Jemma’s face and realises that she _had_ in fact been thinking about accepting.

Fitz puts down the slice of cake he had just picked up in alarm. ‘Jemma. You can’t be serious.’

‘Quite serious, actually.’ She lifts a dab of butter cream off her cake with her finger and offers it to Ollie to suck. ‘Fitz, before we went to the Academy neither of us had ever left the UK before. _You_ had never gone further than a day’s drive from Glasgow.’

She is right about that, and for a moment Fitz remembers the aching pangs of homesickness he had felt in his early weeks at the Academy before he had met her and learnt that _home_ was not as static a concept as he had once thought.

On Jemma’s lap, Ollie lets out a gurgle of delight at the unexpected sweet taste of the cream, and the sound makes both his parents sit up a little straighter, matching grins breaking out on their faces. When he looks up, Fitz sees that Jemma is watching him.

‘I want us to take every opportunity that we can to give Ollie the best childhood,’ she says. ‘And what could be better than spending your formative years travelling the world and having adventures?’

Fitz is just about to point out that it will probably be _them_ having the adventures rather than Ollie, but he stops when he sees the longing on Jemma’s face.

‘You…you really want this, don’t you?’

She chews on her bottom lip. ‘It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,’ she tells him softly, ‘I don’t see how any of us can pass it up.’

And, looking at his family in front of him, Fitz understands that she is right.

He picks his slice of cake up again and takes a large bite from it before speaking again: ‘when we get back, let’s go and see Weaver together. Hopefully she’ll have more information for us by that point.’

Jemma’s eyes light up, and she lifts Ollie into her arms to crawl across the blanket. She sits down heavily in Fitz’s lap, and he tries his best not to grunt under the additional weight as she presses exuberant kisses to his cheeks, and his forehead and anywhere else that she can reach.

After a few seconds of this, he pulls her back, unable to stop himself from smiling.

‘What was that for?’

‘You’re thinking about it,’ Jemma says, her thumb caressing his cheek gently. ‘And that was all I wanted.’

Fitz wraps his arms around her waist, drawing her and Ollie closer. ‘All I want,’ he says, ‘is to know that no matter where we end up, I’ll always have the two of you.’

‘Oh, _Fitz_ …’

Jemma leans into him, resting her head comfortably on his shoulder. She fits there like a missing piece, and caught between them, Ollie gurgles, batting his open palms against Fitz’s chest.

‘You’ll always have us,’ Jemma whispers to him. ‘We’re a family, and nothing in the world can ever change that.’

Her words of affirmation make Fitz feel even warmer than the rays of the sun against his back, and he nods, before inclining his head to kiss her.

He never quite makes it, however, as Ollie seems to have decided that he has gone long enough without his parents’ attention and slams his hand against Fitz’s mouth, preventing him from ever reaching Jemma’s.

With a groan, Fitz falls backwards until he is lying flat on his back and, with Jemma’s laughter ringing in his ears, he lifts his son into the air above him and plants a loud raspberry on Ollie’s stomach instead.

 

v.

May can hear the chaos in the lab long before she enters it; there are whirs and crashes that echo down the Academy corridor, accompanied by a shrill cry that reminds her of police sirens. She knocks briefly before opening the door, and is greeted by the sight of a dozen boxes and plastic containers scattered around the room, some still only half packed, and by a palm sized drone flying right at her head.

Years of lightning fast reflexes unhampered by her stint in admin keep May on her toes, and she ducks just in time. The drone circles her, before careering back across the room towards a girl in a pink blouse, who is chasing several other drones around the main lab bench. When she notices May standing by the door, the girl’s face visibly sags with relief.

‘Oh, thank god,’ she gasps, hurrying across to thrust something warm and round and heavy into May’s arms. ‘Can you hold my baby?’

She doesn’t wait for May’s reply, and turns on her heel back to the bench to pick up a tablet and jab at it frantically.

May blinks, her hands instinctively enclosing the thing she is now holding, and she glances down at it, wondering whether she had misheard the younger agent. A pair of wet, amber eyes blinks back at her, and she realises that she hadn’t.

 _Ah_. Maybe _this_ was the complication Maria had been talking about.

When she had first mentioned her choice of scientists to her friend, Maria’s eyebrows had shot up, but when she had brought up the _complication_ that the pair of agents had between them, May had assumed she was talking about the co-dependency that their field assessment had flagged up. Now though, she realises that she should maybe have asked Hill for some clarification.

After all, a baby was a lot more complicated than co-dependency.

The baby is probably about six months old, with dusty blonde curls and the beginnings of pearly front teeth just starting to cut through his gums. His cheeks are wet with tears and he wriggles impatiently in May’s arms, before realising that she is holding him too securely for him to slip away. His face crumples, turns raspberry red, and he starts to wail, a sound that May recognises as the police siren from earlier. Unconsciously, she starts to bounce him in her arms, hoping that this might sooth him.

‘ _Fitz!_ ’ the girl May has identified as Agent Jemma Simmons yells, as she continues to tap at the tablet screen furiously, the drones dancing around her head. ‘I need you!’

‘Well, you can’t have me; I’m not done packing yet.’

But even as he calls to her, May sees Agent Fitz enter from the lab next door and make his way over to Simmons. Just as she had done, he has to duck to avoid a drone.

‘Simmons, what the _hell_?’

‘Apparently,’ Simmons tells him, passing him the tablet over the bench, ‘your son has spent the morning figuring out how to override the dwarfs’ programing and send them on a mission to destroy the lab, and I have no idea how he did it!’

‘Why is it,’ Fitz ponders aloud as he swipes on the screen, ‘that whenever he does something you don’t like he is _my_ son all of a sudden…?’

‘Well, _I’ve_ certainly never taught him HTML…’

‘…And besides, as much as I truly believe our son is a prodigy, I highly doubt he has been able to completely override my coding since breakfast. Who was it that gave him the tablet in the first place…?’

‘He was watching _The Tweenies_!’ Agent Simmons steps up to help him tap at the screen, shaking her head in exasperation. ‘What harm could _possibly_ have come from _The Tweenies_?’

Watching them chatter back and forth, May starts to feel just a little bit dizzy.

Then, all of a sudden, something works. The frantic whirring in the room ceases, and the drones fall still, before starting to circle back to the bench one by one. In the middle of all of this, Fitz and Simmons have fallen silent too, staring at one another as they grin triumphantly. There is something in the way they look at each other and the way that they smile that makes May wonder whether they even know she is in the room.

The baby in her arms gives a particularly indignant wail, and Simmons’ head snaps up.

‘Fitz,’ she says gently, nodding in May’s direction, and her partner looks up. His eyes widen as he notices her for the first time and he presses the tablet back into Simmons’ hands before hurrying across the room.

May extends her arms slightly to allow him to take his son from her and Fitz gives her a fleeting, anxious smile as he hoists the baby into his own arms.

‘Thanks.’

May only nods in response, watching as he rummages in the nearest box before producing a green rubber toy and handing it to his son. The baby stuffs the toy in his mouth to chew and his eyes dry up almost instantly.

‘What’s his name?’

Fitz seems a little surprised at the question as he brushes his thumb over the baby’s cheek to wipe away the remnants of his tears.

‘Ollie,’ he says, and May can hear the pride radiating from his voice. ‘It’s Oliver, really, but the only person who has ever called him that is Simmons’ mum, so…Ollie.’

‘Ollie,’ May repeats, and he looks up at her, a trickle of drool running down his chin.

Behind them, Agent Simmons had been carefully packing away the drones into their case; now though, she joins them, tucking her hair back behind her ears and with a smile on her face as excited as her partner’s is anxious.

On seeing her, Ollie grunts loudly and lifts his arms towards her, opening and closing his fists demandingly. Simmons pulls a face, bugging her eyes out and sticking out her tongue to make him laugh, before reaching out to take him from Fitz. Her partner passes their baby to her easily, tugging down his rumpled t-shirt and wiping away the sticky trail of drool from his mouth as he does so.

May watches as Agent Simmons runs her fingers over her son’s hair and kisses the spot where his curls meet his forehead.

It is only when she looks up that she realises they are all watching her, almost expectantly, as though they are waiting for her cue to move again.

This is a bad idea. Logically, May has been aware of this since the minute she’d walked through the lab door and been presented with Ollie. She had been wary about bringing Fitz and Simmons onto the Bus from the start, but now she is starting to downright reconsider her decision. Now, she isn’t just bringing two kids not cleared for combat into her team. Now, she is bringing two kids _and_ their kid.

But even as May thinks this, she looks up at them and understands that it won’t be long before she is thinking of all three of them as _her_ kids.

Held in Jemma’s arms, Ollie catches her eye and smiles at her, a wide, toothless grin that feels custom-made for her, and May makes up her mind.

She sighs, and lifts her head to look first at Fitz and then at Simmons.

‘Wheels up in five.’

 

 


End file.
